In this collection Glück brings together a number of poems that revolve around life in a village. It is not clear where, but it is certainly not an American village, it has more of a Mediterranean feel. It is one where time more or less stands still, or rather, where youthfulness and hope have departed. Older people mainly live there, and the poet portrays this aging in a poignant way, in many details about everyday life. In at least four places she comes back to the image of the burning of dead leaves, a bad omen indeed. And the closing lines of the poem with the telling title 'fatigue' do not require further explanation:
“The sun goes down, the dark comes.
Now that summer’s over, the earth is hard, cold;
By the road, a few isolated fires burn.
Nothing remains of love,
only estrangement and hatred.”
As in her other collections, the tone of this one is very mundane, very colloquial and descriptive. But Glück maintains this so consistently that it takes on something conjuring and mesmerizing. I don't think everything in this collection is equally successful, sometimes it seems as if some poems have been pasted in. But behind the cool, descriptive tone there is a gripping, sobering message.

Louise Gluck won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, and she has also won the Pulitzer, National Book Award, Bollingen Prize, the National Humanities Medal, and more. She was the US Poet Laureate in 2003-2004. I had heard of her before, but not read any of her work.

This collection revolves around an agricultural village. It feels very nineteenth-early twentieth century. The book flap says it is Mediterranean, but it was not obvious to me.

The poems all focus on the cycle of life (plant and human)--the seasons, crops, the town square with fountain and young people flirting, children, parents, the healing sun, and so on.

My favorites: Tributaries and A Warm Day
Least favorite: Harvest, which has the line "Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants./Pumpkins, lots of pumpkins./Gourds, ropes pf dried chilies, braids of garlic." Speak for yourself, but pumpkins, dried chilies, and braids of garlic are awesome. I've already baked a pumpkin this year! ( )

El pausado transcurrir de los días, con sus ritmos que parecen abolir el tiempo. La peculiar geometría de las calles que irradian desde la plaza central. El ciclo del cultivo y la cosecha, donde la muerte es simultáneamente cósmica y minúscula, donde el renacimiento es tan certero como el sol. El tempo de una existencia desplegada entre colinas, dolorosamente lejos del mar. Louise Glück condensa en Una vida de pueblo el día a día rural en Estados Unidos, con sus animales y habitantes, cuya juventud exuberante y subsecuente decadencia parecen hacer eco de la naturaleza que los rodea. Con ojo sutil e irónico, con dicción afilada, nos muestra el lado oculto de este devenir aparentemente sencillo, exhibiendo sin tremendismo las pasiones que transcurren hondas en su interior.

Gorgeous! ( )

I approached this work with cautious optimism. While I do enjoy poetry, I have struggled to enjoy modern pieces. This was a delightful surprise and a worthwhile read. The work is not perfect and some of the poems are short, lacking any ground breaking visual concepts; however, there are poems and moments in this selection, that really show the author's talents. If you happen to come across her work in passing, I would recommend stopping to take a second look. It is marose at times but also insightful. The majority of the works deal with our acceptance of death but also has pieces that reflect on friendship and love. It is a matured perspective on the facets of life, which many will be able to relate. ( )